Spotted yesterday on danielabraham.com, the revised cover art for the Star Wars novel he and Ty Franck are currently collaborating on:
Though the Expanse novels have come to be an annual tentpole treat for me, I'm not sure how I feel about James S. A. Corey working on a Star Wars novel. It's not a franchise I'm particularly interested in... though I confess I'm tempted to make an exception for Honor Among Thieves, which is due out surprisingly soon — in March from LucasBooks.
On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system.
In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun...
***
In Caliban's War, the planet Ganymede is frequently referred to as the "breadbasket" of the galaxy. For generations, it has provided a crucial foothold for humanity's expansion into the stars. It's like an oasis in the desert: no-one owns it exactly, but everybody needs it equally. Its practical value, then, is unparalleled, and its political capital is accordingly incalculable, so when things on Ganymede go suddenly sideways because of a firefight between opposing forces and a single apparently alien interloper, all of the major powers from across the vastness of The Expanse take a stance.
Some see a grave threat. Others, an opportunity for untold profit. However, with all-out hostilities in the offing, one potty-mouthed politician finds herself fighting for peace. "Caught up in this smaller, human struggle of war and influence and the tribal division between Earth and Mars," (p.383) not to mention the noncommittal Alliance of Outer Planets, Chrisjen Avasarala - assistant to the UN's undersecretary of executive administration - is one of three new narrators introduced in Caliban's War, and she will have a pivotal part to play in the coming months.
In the interim, brilliantly, she's going to swear like a sailor.
Meanwhile, on Ganymede itself, we meet a disparate pair of POV characters. Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper - Bobbie to her friends and fellow Martian Marines - is the sole survivor of the gruesome ground war that sparked the space battles which rage in the fire-speckled skies. Haunted by the things she saw, she's shipped off to Earth to tell her incredible tale, where she finds an unlikely ally in Avasarala.
And then there's Prax, an unassuming scientist whose immunocompromised daughter is kidnapped during the planet-wide panic that follows the first shots. Our estranged single father is heartbroken, but pragmatic: Prax understands that "he and Mei were a pebble in space. They didn't signify." (p.108)
To one man, though, they matter — perhaps more than anything else. That would be the captain of the Rocinante, James Holden, and for spoileriffic reasons I'd really rather not get into, his is the only returning perspective from the inaugural act of The Expanse. The other half of that equation, Detective Miller, is much missed over the course of Caliban's War, and though his presence is certainly felt, his actual, factual absence from the narrative gives this second salvo a fairly different flavour from the first.
Caliban's War picks up roughly a year after the shocking climax of Leviathan Wakes, with humanity reeling from the revelation that we are not, after all, alone. Somewhere out there an alien intelligence exists, and our species’ situation has slipped from bad to worse, because it doesn’t mean to make nice with its new neighbours.
Ever since the events on Venus, Holden and his crew - namely Naomi, Alex and Amos - have been running odd jobs for the OPA, and the dirty work they've been doing has taken a toll on all involved, though the captain most notably. "He'd turned into the man [Naomi] feared he was becoming. Just another Detective Miller, dispensing frontier justice from the barrel of his gun." (p.352)
Inasmuch as this frequent fear cheapens the legacy of a fantastic character, it also serves to add a compelling dimension to Holden's formerly one-note nature, and the other crew members of the Rocinante are decently developed as well. The child abuse involved in Prax's narrative strikes a surprising chord with Amos; Alex kinda falls for Bobbie; and Naomi is no longer so sure about her feelings for Holden.
The real meat of this superb sequel lies elsewhere, however. With Avasarala - who shines an unflattering light on the politics of tomorrow - and Prax in particular, who offers insight into the family of the future and a layman's slant on the sprawling galaxy of The Expanse. I'm afraid that Bobbie, beyond her involvement in the battle which kicks off Caliban's War, seems something of a spare part, but Prax and Avasarala give this sf series a new lease on life, demonstrating the setting’s inestimable potential at the same time as realising a few of its most fascinating aspects.
Caliban's War can also lay claim to a powerful sense of momentum thanks to its co-authors' impressive storytelling diversity. When the book's four perspectives resolve into two greater tales, and then these two become one, the impulse to pump your fists in pleasure is almost irresistible. The pace is breakneck from the start, and though Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck run into a touch of trouble trying to sustain said for all 600 pages of this unstoppable object, by and large it gets exponentially faster. Markedly harder. I’d go so far as to say better — and Caliban's War is pretty brilliant to begin with.
Which is not to say our allied authors don't miss the mark occasionally. There's Bobbie, obviously. But you should also be aware that there's some rather tiresome dialogue in the cards, as well as an overabundance of laughably transparent politics, and a couple of at best cartoonishly characterised bad guys. Last but not least, Caliban's War attempts to reproduce one of the most memorable moments of Leviathan Wakes, but the hellish descent our refreshed cast of characters must make is substantially less impactful that it once was.
In a sense, then, Caliban's War is more of the same, but the same good thing, it bears saying. And thanks in no small part to the perspectives of Prax and Avasarala, and the new angles on this universe they offer, it's different enough from its predecessor to stand apart, if not alone — some knowledge of book one is practically a prerequisite. That said, last year's Leviathan Wakes got this action-packed series off to a stellar start, so if you haven't read it already... well.
Profoundly affecting and intellectually stimulating space opera The Expanse is not, but space rock, as exemplified by Caliban's War, is at least as awesome. Bring on the encore performance!
Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship,The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.
Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him toThe Scopuliand rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.
Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.
***
You know what the first thing I wanted to do was, when I finished reading book one of The Expanse? Read book two of The Expanse. And mayhap the third after that. You set 'em up, Orbit, and I'll knock 'em down!
Truly, I could not get enough of Leviathan Wakes. To be perfectly frank, I'm not the biggest SF fan - though equally I suppose I am far from the smallest - yet this masterful collaboration checked off every one of my marks, before proceeding to tear right through the census. Were it not for Embassytown, and the months of new genre releases still stretched out before me, I'd declare it the best science fiction novel of 2011 right now and call it a day. Furthermore, much as I love my Mieville - and I love my Mieville - in terms of pure, unadulterated fun, Leviathan Wakes would handily take the cake come that particular cage match.
But apples and oranges: after all, Leviathan Wakes is sprung from a very different oeuvre of SF than Embassytown, with its towering intelligence and its inextricably literary smarts, might be said to signify. It is, as per George R. R. Martin's bang-on three word blurb, "Kickass space opera." Well, quite. Consider my ass kicked black and blue.
The first thing you need to know about Leviathan Wakes - that is to say the first thing after it's awesome - is that it is very much a book of twos. That it comes from the pseudonymous pen of two distinct writers - namely Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price quartet and of late The Dragon's Path, and Ty Franck, assistant to the man and the mind behind A Song of Ice and Fire - two distinct writers working together for the first time, no less, is only the beginning of its duality. Yet it factors.
Rather more notable, and I would assert not unrelated to that precursory split, is the twofold division in its narration, for through its slightly bloated course Leviathan Wakes alternates between chapters told from the perspective of two men, worlds apart in space and purpose. For years, XO Jim Holden has been doing laps around the solar system, which humanity has long since colonised as of the start of The Expanse. But his half-cocked career hauling glaciers from asteroid to planet and back comes to a shocking conclusion when his ship, the Canterbury, is killed. Whether Holden and his close-knit skeleton crew survived the devastation by accident or design remains to be seen, but determined to do The Right Thing, he broadcasts evidence of the unprovoked attack on the hauler far and wide.
So begins the First Solar War.
In fairness to Holden, the self-righteous so-and-so, it's been a long time coming. Practically since mankind took to the stars, there has been a certain tension between those folks who call Earth and its immediate surroundings home, and the Belters, who hail from the Outer Planets, where life is nasty, brutish and short. On Ceres Station, through which flows "a river of wealth and power unrivalled in human history," doggone Detective Joe Miller provides a perspective in ideological opposition to Holden's; he's a glass half empty sort of guy, while the XO's cup is always full. Miller is too well placed to see the effects of Holden's unwitting declaration of war, because from the moment of his address, tensions between the Earthers and Belters on Ceres - already near boiling point - suddenly erupt.
It's all Miller can do to keep the fragile peace as "the great, implacable clockwork of war ticked one step closer to open fighting," so when his chief dumps a kidnap job on the bitter old detective, he thinks little of it. Yet through it all, it is the disappearance of Julie Mao - the rebellious daughter of one of Ceres Station's security force's biggest financial backers - that plays uppermost on Miller's mind. Then, when open conflict ultimately comes, and the detective is promptly divested of his position, it is her trail he follows... and it leads him all the way to Holden, and his merry band of intergalactic idealists.
So it is that two become one, and Leviathan Wakes at last takes to the stars. I'll admit I had my reservations about this collaboration beforehand - the self-same trepidatiousness with which I approach all such works - and though a truly gripping pre-credits tease did a great deal to dissuade them, as the first book of The Expanse wore on, the narrative's stark duality began to jar. Clearly one perspective was written by one author, my head said, and the other by another; as fine a way as any to divide collaborations, so far as it goes, but initially it felt as if I were reading a pair of discrete tales spliced into one peculiar-looking entity.
That's as may be, but rest assured: when Leviathan Wakes finally comes together, by the dead does it come together. In fact I dare say it's a moment made all the more powerful because of the time it takes for Franck and Abraham to enmesh as authors.
When the season to celebrate the year's most singular literary feats arrives, I very much doubt Leviathan Wakes will be deemed a contender. More's the pity, for short a slight sag in the middle and the air of disparity inherent in most collaborative works, it makes for terrific science fiction. That is to say terrific "working man's science fiction," as Corey notes in the incisive interview supplementing the value-packed e-book edition - and snobbery is as snobbery does, so do not expect the Nebulas to take note.
Doesn't mean you and I shouldn't sit up straight in our chairs and devote our collective attention, because the first book of The Expanse boasts some of the most thrilling action in recent memory, and a world - nay, a universe! - brilliantly built yet not overdesigned, courtesy a minimalist aesthetic which rings all too true. It features a cast of characters which, however archetypal, make for fine, fun company; a pace that rarely flags; and moments of excruciating tension, and skin-crawling horror to boot.
If Leviathan Wakes is not particularly thoughtful SF, then it is the perfect reminder that sometimes... sometimes it's nice to turn down the power, and let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. In that regard, I put to you that the entity James S. A. Corey could hold the very universe on its shoulders.
